Exhibition dates: 8th November 2019 – 12th January 2020
Curator: Inka Schube
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Prerow
1960s
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
A couple of years ago I was in Paris, searching for French peasant work clothes of the 1950s in the trendy secondhand shops of the Marais. It took me forever but I eventually found one blue shirt that fitted me… only one. Battered, patched up, but still present after all these years – hard wearing, practical, and tough. But also soft and pliable like a second skin, with its own look and feel, its own distinctive aesthetic. I knew what I wanted, I found it… or it found me. A treasure.
The same could be said of the photographs of Helga Paris. Her photographs picture the tough, hard existence of life in postwar East Germany but there is a fond affection for subject matter in the cameras engagement. Paris approaches her subjects, whether city or people, with directness but it is also a dialogue between the artist and her subjects which “give the viewer an insight into a moment of the everyday lives of an East German resident.”
“Paris opened herself to the worker’s world she found in Prenzlauer Berg, and often took photographs in the immediate surroundings – of friends and neighbours, the area’s old and run-down streets, and the melancholic vitality of the regulars in Berlin’s bars and cafés. The people in her photographs look deeply rooted, as if they had moved to the area with the intention of never going away.”
Misty cobbled corners, people in bars, in clubs, at work, on the street. Much as Ara Güler did for Istanbul (in a more romantic way), Paris captures the essence of an ecosystem, the culture and survival that was the living, behind the Iron Curtain. There is melancholy aplenty, the brooding streets with swooping pigeons and ubiquitous Trabant, all dark in their small sulkiness. There are beautiful boys with Anarchy stencilled on their jumper desiring liberated life, and reflective women deep in their own thoughts. Naira! Naira! Smoking a fag, with drunk-eyed pictures of a child on dirty wall, behind. Oh Naira, of what were you thinking! What brought you to this place?
There is sullenness, compassion, bohemians, students and countercultural intellectuals all pictured with her probing mind. If you could say that a subject finds an artist then this is that aphorism in full technicolor. Engaged and engaging, these essential images stand the test of time – as relevant now in an era of neo-liberal fascism as they ever were in the past.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Akademie der Künste for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
No title
1974
From the series Müllfahrer (Garbage Drivers)
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Selbst im Spiegel (Self-Portrait in the Mirror)
1971
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
No title
1975
From the series Berliner Kneipen (Berlin Pubs)
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Hund, Immanuelkirchstr. (Dog, Immanuelkirchstrasse)
1970s
From Berlin 1974-1982
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Winsstraße mit Taube (Winsstrasse with Pigeon)
1970s
From Berlin 1974-1982
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Marienburger Strasse
1970s
From Berlin 1974-1982
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Jugendweihe René Köstner
1970s
From Berlin 1974-1982
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Meteln (Christa and Gerhard Wolf)
1977
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (born in 1938 in Goleniów, Poland) occupies an outstanding position in German photography. Her oeuvre exhibits the poetry of a Henri Cartier-Bresson as well as the austerity of an August Sander or Renger-Patzsch. Paris, who has lived in Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin since 1966, has chronicled the long history of postwar East Germany. For more than three decades she has directed her gentle yet precise gaze toward the people who live it. Her photographs tell of the melancholy vitality of East Berlin corner pubs and the poetic tristesse of the old streetcars of the seventies. We encounter garbage truck drivers, stubbornly furious or calm teenagers, and proud female textile mill workers. We travel through Georgia and Siebenbürgen, and meander through the central German industrial city of Halle, a “diva in gray.” But these photographs also tell of the end of the postwar era, of the search for images of childhood and their retrieval.
Text from the catalogue to the exhibition
Helga Paris: Fotografie from arts-news on Vimeo
Fotografie is a retrospective look at the work of German photographer, Helga Paris. Exhibiting a collection of photos taken in East Germany in the postwar period, Paris’s work is considered to be one of the most revealing and compassionate bodies of work reflecting life in Germany at that time. Going beyond a simple ‘social study’, Paris’s technique was simply to engage with her subjects, rather than take on the role of the distant street photographer. In making this connection, the result has been a collection of photos that give the viewer an insight into a moment of the everyday lives of an East German resident.
Starting in the 60s, Helga Paris took an interest in photography and began teaching herself the basics. Paris came from a fashion and art background, but it was her interest in the everyday lives of the East Berlin people, during the postwar period that made her want to capture that on film.
Text from the Vimeo website
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Club
1981
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Berliner Kneipen (Berlin pubs)
From the series Berlin 1974-1982
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Since 1966 Helga Paris has lived in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg, a traditionally working class district that in the DDR days had become a refuge for bohemians, students and countercultural intellectuals, condoned by the authorities. Here she became a chronicler of post-war East Germany. Paris opened herself to the worker’s world she found in Prenzlauer Berg, and often took photographs in the immediate surroundings – of friends and neighbours, the area’s old and run-down streets, and the melancholic vitality of the regulars in Berlin’s bars and cafés. The people in her photographs look deeply rooted, as if they had moved to the area with the intention of never going away. Their faces express both their exhaustion and their lust for life.
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Sven
1981-1982
From the series Berliner Jugendliche (Berlin Youth)
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Pauer
From the series Berlin Youth
1981-1982
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Ramona
1982
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Ramona, Kollwitzstrasse
1982
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Naira
1982
From the series Georgien (Georgia)
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
No title
1983-1985
From the series Häuser und Gesichter, Halle / Houses and Faces, Halle 1983-1985
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Grosse Klausstrasse Flutgasse
1983-1985
From the series Häuser und Gesichter, Halle / Houses and Faces, Halle 1983-1985
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Zwei Frauen (Two Women)
1983-1985
From the series Häuser und Gesichter, Halle / Houses and Faces, Halle 1983-1985
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
No title
1983-1985
From the series Houses and Faces, Halle 1983-1985
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
From 8 November 2019 to 12 January 2020 at its exhibition halls at Pariser Platz, the Akademie der Künste will present the photographic work of Helga Paris from 1968 to 2011. Featuring 275 works, including many individual images and series that are to be shown for the first time, this will be her most comprehensive exhibition to date and the first retrospective of the artist in her home city of Berlin in 25 years. Excerpts from the extensive Leipzig, Hauptbahnhof (1981), Moskau (1991/1992) and Mein Alex (2011) series will be seen for the first time, among others.
In addition to the photographer’s special ability to make ever-changing compressed contemporary history tangible in her images and series over the course of decades, it is her tender, graceful and heavily nuanced black-and-white modulations expressing social empathy that make her work unmistakable.
Helga Paris was born in 1938 in Gollnow, Pomerania (today Polish town of Goleniów), and grew up in Zossen near Berlin. She began her work as a self-taught photographer in the 1960s. She became one of the key chroniclers of life in East Berlin with images of her neighbourhood in the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg, pictures of pub-goers, sanitation workers, the women from the VEB Treffmodelle clothing factory, artists, punks, children from Hellersdorf and passers-by from Alexanderplatz. Helga Paris also took photographs in Transylvania (1980), Georgia (1982) and the city of Halle (1983-1985), where she produced her Diva in Grau series that was banned from being shown until 1989/1990, as well as in Volgograd (1990), New York (1995) and Poland (1996/1997), among others. Helga Paris has been a member of the Film and Media Art Section of the Akademie der Künste since 1996.
The curator of the exhibition is art historian Inka Schube, who has worked with Helga Paris on numerous occasions. Filmmaker Helke Misselwitz will present an installation involving interviews with Helga Paris on the topics of origin, the changing city and her work as a photographer in East Germany and up into the early 21st century.
On the occasion of the exhibition, the Spector Books publishing house, Leipzig has released the photography book Helga Paris. Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, 1981.
An exhibition by the Akademie der Künste in cooperation with the ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen), with the kind support of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung that allowed the living legacy to be indexed and new prints of three previously unpublished series to be made, as well as the DEFA-Foundation.
Press release from the Akademie der Künste website [Online] Cited 11/11/2019
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Self-portraits
1981-1989
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Frauen im Bekleidungswerk Treff-Modelle
1984
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Frauen im Bekleidungswerk Treff-Modelle
1984
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
In the early 1980s the DDR’s Gesellschaft für Fotografie im Kulturbund gave professional photographers commissions that allowed them to work on projects of their own choosing. These commissions not only gave photographers financial security, but also opened doors to places where, under normal circumstances, only media loyal to the regime had been allowed to work. Helga Paris chose to photograph a clothing factory, Treff-Modelle VEB in Berlin, where she herself had had some work experience during her fashion design studies. There she portrayed the factory’s female workers, eliciting a wide variety of subtle reactions from them: from self-confident and open to confrontational and defensive.
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
No title
1984
Gelatin silver print
From the series Frauen im Bekleidungswerk VEB Treffmodelle Berlin (Women at the Clothing factory VEB Treffmodelle Berlin)
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
With around 275 photographs from the period of 1968 till 2011 – including numerous single frames and series shown for the first time – the exhibition of Helga Paris at the Akademie der Künste on Pariser Platz is the photographer’s most comprehensive to date. It is the first retrospective of Paris’ work in her home city of Berlin in 25 years.
Having lived in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district since 1966, Helga Paris (born 1938) began taking photos of people in her neighbourhood in the early 1970s. She found her photographic motifs in flats, pubs, break rooms and factory halls, or on the streets and in train stations. With a background in modernist painting, theatre and poetry as well as early Soviet, Italian and French cinema, the autodidact photographer has spent the last four and a half decades developing an extensive oeuvre of delicate, nuanced black-and-white photography.
But she is not only a chronicler of Prenzlauer Berg. Helga Paris also has taken photos in Halle, Leipzig, Transylvania, Georgia, Moscow, Volgograd and New York. There, as in her local neighbourhood, she constantly explores how it feels “to be in history”, and how the respective circumstances are reflected at the most private level. Helga Paris’s imagery has a particular poetic approachability, in part because it forgoes all ideological interpretations; her gaze suggests profound solidarity.
For the exhibition, the director Helke Misselwitz has designed a documentary film triptych, in which she makes it possible to experience how the life and work of Helga Paris are both interwoven and interdependent. Misselwitz traces a wide arc from the photographer’s childhood to the present; from Prenzlauer Berg to sites around the world; and from Paris’ close-ups to her farsighted vision.
Text from the Akademie der Künste website [Online] Cited 11/11/2019
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Sohn des Architekten Melnikow (Son of the architect Melnikov)
1991-1992
From the series Moskau 1991-1992
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
No title
1991-1992
From the series Moscow 1991-1992
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
As a result of the Cold War, the remarkable oeuvre of the German photographer Helga Paris (1938) was long almost unknown west of the Iron Curtain. While Paris enjoyed widespread popularity in East Germany, her photographs rarely reached a public in the West. Although her work, with its quite intimate glimpses of daily life in East Germany, is strongly linked to the course of her own life, its expressiveness is universal. The empathy of her gaze makes it easy for us to imagine ourselves in the people and places she photographed.
Resilience
On one hand Helga Paris’ photographs are about life in the German Democratic Republic (DDR), where the Second World War and the country’s communist regime brought restriction, loss, destruction and decline in their wake. On the other they show the gaze of a photographer who had been born in Pommeren (now in Poland), who grew up close to postwar Berlin, and who faced the world with resilience, curiosity and compassion. In 1966 Paris moved for good to Prenzlauer Berg in East Berlin, a traditionally working-class district that had become a refuge for bohemians, students and countercultural intellectuals, closely watched but condoned by the authorities. Here she became a chronicler of postwar East Germany. She often worked in the immediate surroundings – taking photographs of friends and neighbours, on the street, and in bars and cafés.
Hidden tensions
Although in the 1970s and 1980s Helga Paris also photographed in Romania, Poland and Georgia, the accent in the Huis Marseille exhibition is on East Germany before and after the Wende (1989-1990). She created the series Berliner Jugendliche (Berlin Youth) in 1980-1981, when her own children were teenagers, portraying youngsters who believed in an alternative way of life and who went to the concerts given by independent bands – a sort of East German variant of the Western punk scene. Their anarchic lifestyle did not go unnoticed by the regime, and many of those she portrayed also spent some time in prison. Paris subtly but revealingly captures the hidden tensions of the time in the teenagers’ postures, gestures, and facial expressions. She elicited a similar scale of reactions in the workers she photographed for the series Frauen im Bekleidungswerk VEB Treffmodelle Berlin (Women at the textile factory VEB Models, 1984): from self-confident and open to confrontational and defensive.
Run-down
In the same period Helga Paris documented the decline of the old city centre of Halle, interspersing photos of the city’s long-neglected buildings and streets with portraits of its residents – who only allowed themselves to be photographed if they had a say in how their portraits were taken. The impoverishment of Halle was only partly the result of the faltering East German economy; the government was also deliberately allowing the historic centre of Halle and other East German cities to become rundown in order to compel their populations to move into modern flats on urban peripheries. The exhibition Häuser und Gesichter: Halle 1983-85 was banned by the regime in 1987; it was 1990 before the people of Halle could see the photographs for themselves.
Helga Paris was born Helga Steffens in 1938 in Gollnow, Pommeren, now known as Goleniów in Poland. At the end of the war she fled with her family to Zossen, her father’s native city. She first came into contact with photography through an aunt who worked in a photographic laboratory. Between 1956 and 1960 she studied fashion design at the Fachschule für Bekleidung in Berlin. There she met the artist Ronald Paris, to whom she was married between 1961 and 1974, and with whom she had two children.
Via the Arbeiter- und Studententheater in Berlin, for which she made costumes, Paris came into contact with the later documentary maker Peter Voigt, who encouraged her to take more photographs. To improve her techniques, from 1967 to 1968 she worked in the Deutsche Werbeund Anzeigengesellschaft DEWAG photographic laboratory. She took many photographs in the theatre, such as productions of the Volksbühne, as her husband was also its set designer. In later years she would say that this experience had given her a solid foundation for her attitude to space as a street photographer.
Paris’s work was first exhibited in 1978, in the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Dresden. In 1996 she became a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. Her self-portraits were a great success at the Kunst in der DDR exhibition in the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (2003), and in 2004 Helga Paris was awarded the prestigious Hannah-Höch-Preis for a lifetime of achievement in the arts.
Press release from Huis Marseille for the exhibition Helga Paris / East Germany 1974-1998 Cited 26/11/2019
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Erinnerung an Z (Memory of Z)
1994
Gelatin silver print
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
No title
1998
Gelatin silver print
From the series Hellersdorf
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Hellersdorf #2
1998
Gelatin silver print
From the series Hellersdorf
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Hellersdorf #7
1998
Gelatin silver print
From the series Hellersdorf
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
Helga Paris (German born Poland, b. 1938)
Hellersdorf #8
1998
Gelatin silver print
From the series Hellersdorf
Photo: © Helga Paris
Source: ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen)
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